Turning Community Elder Care into a Profession: Insights from Trainees, Developers, Employers and Supervisors

Aya Ben-Harush, Liat Ayalon and Shiri Shinan-Altman
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Aya Ben-Harush: Social Work Department, Faculty of Social & Community Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer 4025000, Israel
Liat Ayalon: School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel
Shiri Shinan-Altman: School of Social Work, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 16, 1-11

Abstract: This study explores the process of turning elder care into a profession, by giving a voice to different professionals who took part in developing and implementing a new Israeli training program for community care workers. The program attempts to offer a response to the shortage of paid long-term carers for older adults by turning community elder care into a profession. Interviews with graduates, trainees who dropped out of the program, developers, employers and supervisors from three regions of the training program were conducted. Analysis explored attempts to transition community care from an occupation to a profession. The community care worker’s role and its uniqueness in comparison to the traditional paid long-term care worker are discussed. The difficulties that stem from the ambiguity of the definition of this new occupation are described.

Keywords: care workers; professionalism; preparation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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